Arachnophobia

Yesterday I had the dubious pleasure of meeting the hairiest, most enormous spider in the galaxy.

There I was in the kitchen, eating a ham sandwich (shades of Mama Cass) before heading out to teach my evening class. Not really paying much attention to anything. I'm not sure where it came from (the ceiling? one of my houseplants? the moon?) but I heard something hit the floor.

That's right, heard it hit the floor. Jonas, who has a habit of sitting near my feet when ham sandwiches are involved, took a few steps.

Backward.

I looked over, expecting....I don't know. A large cat toy. A mouse. A bird. One of the other cats. T-rex. Something of substance that would freak poor Jonas out if it hit the floor and made that much noise.

And there. It. Was.

It was the size of a quarter. A big, black, hairy quarter with legs. A fast quarter. I am told that I made the girliest sound anyone's ever heard out of me before asking calmly for someone with bigger feet to come step on it, but I'm rather proud because I did not actually jump up onto the chair and go full Homer-Simpson-scream, complete with wagging tongue.

I'm usually in charge of killing spiders in my household, by default. We had a deal: I don't get near multi-pedes, and he doesn't do spiders. Hey, marriage is a compromise, right? Let me tell you. If this had been our house, I would have signed a peace treaty with the sucker and given him sovereign domain over his half of the kitchen. But I'm at my folks', so I did what any self-reliant woman would do in my situation: I hollered for my daddy.

Now, frequently I will talk to bugs while I am escorting them out of the house so they don't become a cat-snack, and when outside I respect that I am a guest in the bugs' house and act accordingly.

But if something has eight legs and its own zip code, all bets are off.